2024-11-21:

Fri:
Feeling almost normal.
Did some work! The SIPRnet thing for Gina.
Got a screenshot of a message for Joe, we were tracking down all instances of "smart card" to change it to "authentication token."
Watched a demo of the character limit, given by Christina, and worked on a document to print for Don so he could scan it and try to figure out a good set of defaults for a client complaining, rightfully, that the new versalink scan quality is yucky socks compared to the old versalink. They are right to do so, as our machines are junk. Sorry, but it's the truth. They are too under-powered, and there is a huge quality difference between the two at the default settings. We never should have accepted them from Lexmark.

No more haul, I kept looking.

Helped Don with his thing, he was not doing what he needed to get the results he wanted. Thankfully I was watching him fail and when he called me to ask why his results were not logical I could explain them to him.

Did the shopping, went to the bank. The teller I saw could cosplay a cute goblin girl so easily. She's so cute! Paint her green, give her some long ears, chunky goggles, overalls and some tools and she would be a perfect goblin inventor.

Saw my parents. Then home for game. We got to the first dungeon! And through it! THey had a good idea about finding the dungeons, asking Celestia to use ritual magic to "ping" them and she said she would work on that. But the entrance was still at the castle and they still poked around and rolled high enough to find it. The exact same thing would have happened, of course, but the ritual thing would have been way cooler. Oh well. Stopped at 11:30. Done! No game next week.

Sat:
Busy day!
Got my sites and such out of the way, in case I wasn't going to be back. This turned out to be the correct decision.
Went out to the 11:00. That went fine, only took an hour. Looked into a few things for him. He doesn't really understand how spreadsheet scaling works and honestly he's trying to use a spreadsheet for just a list which ok but...
Came back to eat lunch.
Cleaned up a little, checked all the packages I had been getting in the last few days but not opening.
Then out to the 2:00. It would have gone much faster had he not wanted to build the most gaudy PC money can reasonably buy. His case had 3 fans, his water cooler had 3 fans, and he purchased an additional three fans. And of course everything was RGB. Yes, light up fans. RAM. The cooler, which also had an LCD display built into it for temp readings. Oh and his keyboard was RGB too. Now to be fair so is mine, up to a point. But his was actively doing patterns and such. This would drive me nuts, who would even want that? Anyway; This required 2 separate RGB controllers that had to be fit into the case with all kinds of wires going everywhere.

That said, despite me leaving there at around 6:00, making me 40 minutes late to Sean's, everything went as well as could reasonably expected. It powered on and worked- the very first time. We had some shenanigans around getting him online so the M$ requirement of making an M$ account could be fulfilled, thanks M$. But I followed the M$ directions, they didn't work, so I did what I would do otherwise and that did work, so he got online and past the stupid screen "you have to be online." No, no I don't, M$. Please stop this nonsense.

Pretty happy how it came out, even if we have radically different ideas about what a computer should look like. Remember, I have the computer just bigger across than whatever mouse you are using. It only has 1, white, led.

Then to Sean's for game. We didn't get through the whole adventure. Shock and surprise, I know! We worked out our schedule for the next few games. We're doing two weeks in a row, won't be many movie nights between now and Christmas. Oh and thanks again to Mizzy for making dinner.

Sun:
Daily readings.
Then I took a nap. Hey, I went to bed at 1:00 and got up at 7:00 as my stupid internal stuff was like, that's the time to get up, right? Sigh.

Had lunch.

Looked the PC over, and yes it seems fine. Found a better work around for the MS requimerent thing! There's a command you can use to tell the "out of box experience" to shove off, it'll reboot, allow you to say "I don't have internet" and get set up locally again. Would have been nice to know this yesterday, but okay, sure. That works. I should tattoo it on my hand so I always have it. It can be brought to the guy. Probably Tuesday, as both other days are booked. Oh, and the fun part is Wednesday is also vet day, so I get to leave work, pick up Oliver, take him to the vet, bring him back, then go out to second job. Yay.

Worked on my character, as Sean was changing the rules on me. It's fair, when we were facing the 5 kidnappers, and my creature alone took out three of them, and there are three other party members, it's a bit unbalanced. (It was under the effects of haste magic at the time so it's still a bit unfair to compare the two but still!) So I'm not mad about it. This time. It will allow me to roll 22 dice when I do magic (and 24 when we finish this adventure) so honestly it may work out better for me in the long run? I was only rolling 16 before this. I could choose to use the new rules and select 3 stats to raise by 1, or simply take the chance with the 6 extra dice I'm rolling that some of them will be strength or grace anyway, making it a moot point. The thing I replaced allowed me to increase all of the creature's stats by 2. Again, why does it need intelligence or resolve? It's a mindless creature made of magic. It only needs to hit and do damage. And maybe the occasional dodge? Plus I do other spells with magic like floating my shield around and healing, (and hasting) so it helps all of them too. Win/win in my book. Your trying to nerf me has only once again made me stronger.

Got ready for tomorrow. Called PC guy, can't do tues/thurs so he's getting Sat before the Pyre game. Hopefully it won't take forever, but I figure 2 hours should be fine.

Xbox with the others, after getting a demo of Magicraft working on the Mac. Needed a font installed, but it plays beautify otherwise. It's pretty cheap, and I like some of the mechanics better than Wizard of Legend. We'll see. You basically build a wand by slotting the effect of spells into it. This seems exactly like my kind of thing.

Mon:
Got the second patch for the PJL stuff, so loaded that up and tested it. They didn't send it to me or anything. I simply discovered it from comments they left in the bugs I had written.
Oh, and Christina came over looking to see if our software server was down. It was. Something about a user error. Neat.
Had the demo for it right after that. I did find another difference with the HP I was able to mention. See, on one command if you leave a "\" on the end it gives an error. But on the other command it works. The HP works either way. So I brought that up. They're going to look into it. But Kevin is going to send the patch to the customer as is, see what they think. Testing done then.

Wrote the first chapter of the new Pony Book: Journey into the Dark.

Just barely, almost didn't finish it.

I feel there was something else. Oh right Gina got me another number for a B605 so I tested the SIPRnet plugin activation on that device. Didn't take too long.

Went out for second job. Just down 250 but a ways. Went fine, somehow adblock plus was making her chrome RAM usage spike all over the place. So very strange. Took it out and put it back, seemed fine. Huh. And put his wi-fi printer on a static IP, hope that helps.

Back here, checked sites. Had dinner.
No calls, thank you!

Let's do a little more Magicraft, now that I can read the in game text!

Tues:
The usual Joe meeting in the morning.

Got the haul.

Wrote the next chapter of the book. I have only a bit more content so that may finish up soon.

Set up a scanning machine for Don, not that he's going to be in tomorrow.

There was a short onedrive meeting as well, but basically only to say that everything was fine.

That was pretty much it at work.

Came back here, checked sites, ate dinner.

Tried the mission I couldn't get through with Ajax now that I had mods for him specifically again, and the gun Sean suggested. Didn't have all the mods he had, but I tried my best. I did get through it.

No calls!

Tomorrow is the busy day, vet and then off to the guy with the no boot device. Though when I called he said he got it running and was going to back up what he could? So who knows.

Xbox with the others.

Wed:
With Don gone it was fairly quiet, no weird scanning requests and whatnot.

In fact there wasn't much work stuff at all.

I did finish the last of the content, so it's at 2.8 chapters right now. I just need a little bit more for chapter 3.

Started an outline for The Library of Good and Evil. Just so I don't forget it. I don't know, it would be a totally unique story and world, not a fanfic or anything like that. Not sure how it would go.

Took Oliver in to the vet. He's gained a half pound, I was hoping for more, honestly.
But he seems fine otherwise. They took a sample of his lump, and gave me an estimate for his teeth. Over a thousand dollars. Was it that expensive before?

Then out to "no boot device" guy. His mouse was messed up, could that have done something? I couldn't use it, the menus kept dropping out. I gave him a new one. Checked it out, did some disk scans, the usual. Make sure his backup was working. Didn't see anything out of place.

Back here. Ate dinner.

Two calls, but both were done over the phone.

Thurs:
Bunch of meetings in the afternoon. Met with the translation team where they basically took my side and said yes, we have to check everything because our software sucks and sometimes buttons and such don't work when we change the language. I'm paraphrasing of course. But the fact remains Don was all like "oh it won't be that hard" and they were like "and then we test this, and then we have to do this, and automation of the task failed several times so we have to do at manually" and he was all "oh crap Robert was right this is a huge ask and may take more than a day."

Then we met to discuss the scan size Papercut stuff which I said sounded suspiciously like what we had fixed for onedrive so whatever they were experiencing would probably change with newer firmware.

Then an hour long onedrive meeting where we discussed the customer's ask, then the usual planning meeting. Sheesh. Then plants of course.

Got some haul, took a bit home. I'll bring the rest to my parents.

Otherwise did a little more work on the outline, I don't know what exactly I want to have happened with the old librarian.

Came back here, no calls. Checked sites, ate dinner.

Vet wants a second opinion on the sample they took from Oliver's lump, that can't be good. $100+.

Let's look ahead.

Busy weekend, tomorrow is the usual shopping and seeing my parents. Then the concert.

Saturday is the Pyre game. Also setting up the new PC I got for the guy at 1:00.

Hopefully it's dry enough, I think I can do a second leaf gathering by now, most of the back tree is down. So that has to be done at some point. It rained pretty hard today.

And then of course next week turkey day. We'll all be getting together at the end of that day won't we? Yes we will, and you can read about all the exciting things that happened between now and then.

I think that's it! Happy turkey day everyone, and stay safe. See you next time.